Random Name Picker

Type or paste your options into the box, one per line. Before each pick the tool cleans the list:

• Spaces at the start and end of a line are removed.
• Blank lines are skipped, so stray empty rows don't become entries.
• Commas don't split anything. Ana, Ben, Cara on one line is a single entry. Put each name on its own line.
• Duplicates are kept. A name on two lines has twice the chance of any other, and Ana and ana count as two different entries.

Pasting a column from a spreadsheet works well, because each cell arrives on its own line. If the box is empty, the button does nothing.

The picker never removes a name it has chosen. Each press draws from the full list again, so the same person can come up twice running. With 30 names, three presses in a row include at least one repeat 9.78% of the time.

To draw several different winners, delete each winner's line before the next press. Drawing three winners from 30 that way gives every person exactly a 10% chance of being one of them.

Earlier picks are listed on the History line below the button, newest first, up to 11 of them, which helps you check which lines you still need to delete.

Each pick takes one 32-bit number from your browser's cryptographic generator (crypto.getRandomValues). The remainder after dividing by the number of entries is the line that wins. When the list length is a power of two, such as 8, 16 or 32, every line has exactly the same chance. Otherwise a few lines get one extra value out of 4,294,967,296. With 30 names, the first 16 lines are favored by that one value each, which is nowhere near enough to matter in a raffle.

You can use duplicates on purpose to weight a draw. With 10 people and one of them entered twice, the list has 11 lines: that person has an 18.18% chance and everyone else 9.09%.

• Show or share the full list before you pick, so everyone can see they're on it, and only once.
• Announce beforehand how many winners you'll draw and what happens if a winner doesn't respond, for example a fresh draw from the remaining names.
• Record or screen-share the pick. The tool keeps no record of its own, and the History line clears when the page reloads.
• If the giveaway has published rules, follow those over anything here.